The Silent Holocaust: Why Humanity Must Achieve Victory over Islam

by
Azam Kamguian

What
I am going to talk about is Islam; contemporary Islam in Iran. I will
describe some episodes of Islamic carnage and pass you briefly through
what happened and still is happening in Iran. I will talk about those
who have nurtured Islamic movements or have tried to justify Islam. I
will conclude by emphasizing the urgency of achieving the victory of
humanity over Islam and the practical steps that should be taken to
achieve this.

The
final decades of the 20th century witnessed another Holocaust - an
Islamic one, in which millions have been and continue to be shot,
decapitated and stoned to death; in which people have been slaughtered
and displaced by Islamic states, political Islamic movements and
Islamic terrorists in Iran, the Sudan, Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt,
Nigeria, Central Asia, and now in America. The robe, turban and Koran
continue to victimize people. Any voice of dissent or freedom has been
silenced on the spot. The oppression maintained by Islamic movements
primarily takes the form of opposition to the freedom of women, by
crushing women's civil liberties, by curtailing freedom of expression
in the cultural and personal domains, by enforcing brutal laws and
traditions, and by the mass killing of people from young children to
the elderly.

Essentially,
Islam is a set of beliefs and rules that militate against human
prosperity, happiness, welfare, freedom, equality and knowledge. Islam
and a full human life are contradictory concepts, opposed to each
other. Islam under any kind of interpretation is and always has been a
strong force against secularism, modernism, egalitarianism and women's
rights. Political Islam, however, is a political movement that has come
to the fore against secular and progressive movements for liberation,
and against cultural and intellectual advances. Violence and disregard
for human dignity are inherent in the manifestos of political Islamic
groups.

“The very statement that an Islamic republic exists somewhere means that brutal violence exists within it.”

After
political Islam took power in Iran, creating an Islamic Republic, this
movement came out of the margins in other Middle Eastern countries. It
was in Iran that political Islam first organised itself into a
government and thus turned into a considerable force in the region. In
Iran, under an Islamic state, violence has had another dimension: one
that is based on Islam. The very statement that an Islamic Republic
exists somewhere means that brutal violence exists in it. The mere fact
that people are forced to abide by laws based on something some god is
believed to have said somewhere, or that some prophet has said, itself
represents a form of violence. If anyone protests against such laws,
they are subject to punishment and suppression. Islam means the worst
and the most ferocious kind of violence. Iran is the most transparent
picture of what Islam is capable of. I will try to pass you briefly
through this period of violence, atrocities, and misogyny - a bloodbath
committed by Islam in power.

In
Iran, I lived through thousands of days when Islam shed blood. Since
1979, a hundred thousand men, women and children have been executed in
the name of Allah. I have lived through days when I, along with
thousands of men and women throughout the country, looked for the names
of our lovers, husbands, wives, friends, daughters, sons, colleagues
and students in newspapers which daily announced the names of the
executed. Days when the soldiers of Allah attacked bookstores and
publishing houses and burned books. Days of armed attacks on
universities, killing students all over the country. Weeks and months
of bloody attacks on workers' strikes and demonstrations. Years of
assassination of opponents inside and outside Iran. Years of
suppression and brutal murder of atheists, freethinkers, socialists,
trade union leaders and activists, Marxists, Bahais, women who resisted
the misery of hijab and the rule of sexual apartheid, and many others
who were none of these, who were arrested in the streets and then
executed simply because of their innocent non-Islamic appearance. And
to the hundred thousand murdered in Iran must be added the millions who
have died in Algeria, the Sudan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere. A
silent holocaust about which the civilised world does nothing.

I,
along with thousands of political prisoners, was tortured by order of
the representative of Allah and Sharia; tortured, while the verses of
the Koran about nonbelievers were played in the torture chambers. The
voice reading the Koran was mixed with our cries of pain from lashes
and other brutal forms of torture. They raped women political prisoners
for the sake of Allah and in expectation of his reward. They prayed
before raping them. Thousands were shot to death by execution squads
while Koranic verses were recited. Prisoners were awakened every day at
dawn to the sound of gunshots aimed at their friends and cellmates.
From the numbers of shots you could work out how many had been murdered
that day. The killing machine did not stop for a minute. The fathers
and mothers, husbands and wives who received the bloody clothes of
their loved ones had to pay for the bullets. They created an Islamic
Auschwitz. Many of the best, the most passionate and progressive people
were massacred. The dimensions of the horror are beyond imagining.

From
that time, love, happiness, smiling, any free human interaction was
forbidden. Islam took over completely. This is what happened to my
generation. But it was not limited only to my generation, It had bloody
consequences for our parents’ generation and for the next generation.
During those years, millions of children were brainwashed and
manipulated. The crimes committed by the Islamic Republic of Iran and
political Islam in the region are comparable to the crimes committed by
Fascism in the 1930s and early 1940s, and to the genocide in Rwanda and
Indonesia.

Yet
these are events that humanity around the world has been largely
unaware of. A Holocaust which, if humanity knew of its dimensions and
intensity, would certainly cause it to weep. With the downfall of such
regimes, the world will finally be given an opportunity to know the
truth - victims will speak out, prisons and torture chambers will be
exposed, torturers will make heart-wrenching confessions, Islamic
prosecutors and judges will reveal what they did to their victims
behind prison walls. Then people all over the world will see what a
despicable phenomenon Islam is. They will finally find out the truth
about those governments that backed the Islamic movements and the
Western mainstream media that deliberately blocked people's access to
the truth.

The
aftermath of September 11 exposed some of the reality of what is
happening to people living under the constant terror of Islam. It
exposed something of the tragedy that befell women under the Taliban.
It revealed, to some extent, the true substance of Islam. But it became
plain to see that this carnage is Islamic. It became evident that it is
all about Islam.

When
I came to the West in the beginning of the 1990s, I was faced by the
fact that the majority of intellectuals, the mainstream media, the
academic world, and many feminists, in the name of respecting other
cultures and religions, were trying to justify Islam by dividing it
into fundamentalist and moderate, progressive and reactionary, Medina's
and Mecca's, folksy and non-folksy, poisonous and edible. For people
like me, first-hand victims of the Islamic Holocaust, it was
suffocating to listen to and to have to refute endless tales to justify
this terror, atrocity and misogyny. Parallel to this Islamic carnage,
apologists for Islam try to divert people's righteous loathing for
Islam and for the political Islamic movement, to limit it to a hatred
of fundamentalism'. They attempt to reduce the anti-Islamic struggle to
anti-fundamentalism. They keep telling us that what we loathe is
fundamentalism, not the 'true', the 'real' Islam. They pledge 'reform
in Islam' and the application of a 'positive interpretation of the
Koran' to women's rights by ‘linguistic turn’. They raise the idea of
Islamic feminism and try to attach a human face to the monstrous face
of Islam against women.

“The
rights of freedom of expression, equality of men and women, and a
secular state apply to people in the 'Third World' too. Isn't it
shameful that we have to argue about it?”

The
truth should be spoken. We shouldn't let apologists for Islam play with
people's lives any more. We should say clearly and loudly that it is
all about Islam. What we have seen is the reality of Islam in power.
The fact is that Western liberal and left-wing intellectuals feel
guilty about past colonial history and are apologetic to the ‘Third
World’. They consider the 'Third World' a given entity, where people
are keen to suffer under the rotten rules of Islam, where people are
happy to be deprived of the achievements of human civilization in the
21st century. According to them, women desire sexual apartheid, girls
love to be segregated from boys, and people hate civil rights and
individual freedom. In their view, people are the allies of Islamic
movements and Islamic governments. This is indeed a distorted image of
the realities. This is an inverted colonialism. In this picture, people
who are fighting for civil rights, secularism and against political
Islam do not exist. This self-centered mentality in which everything
should revolve around the guilt of Western pseudo-intellectuals is
appalling. The rights of freedom of expression, equality of men and
women, and a secular state apply to people in the 'Third World' too.
Isn't it shameful that we have to argue about it?

Contrary
to this view, there is a fight going on - and it has been going on for
over 20 years - between progressive movements in the Middle East and in
the West on the one side, and political Islam on the other. The records
of the daily struggle of people and the non-Islamic opposition in
Islam-ridden countries, and the news of the daily resistance of the
youth and women in Iran, demonstrate the reality of peoples' demands in
the 'Third World'. Since 1979, Iranian society has changed dramatically
and deeply. The movement for secularism and atheism, for modern ideas
and culture, for individual freedom, for women's liberation and civil
liberties has been widespread and deep. Disgust for religion and the
backward culture of those in power is immense.

Secularism
must be defended actively and resolutely in Islam - ridden countries.
Universal human and civil rights must be the standard. Secularism is
not only realizable, but also, after the experiences of Iran,
Afghanistan, the Sudan and Algeria, is an urgent and pressing need and
demand of the people of the region. The demand for secularism must push
for absolute and complete separation of religion from the State;
complete separation of religion from education; freedom of religion and
atheism; laws free of religious content; and for religion to be
declared the private affair of individuals. A conscious struggle must
be conducted against the power of organised religion. All religious
denominations and sects should be officially registered as private
enterprises, subject to regulations and laws.

To
realise these ideals and demands, we need a massive joint force.
Despite the struggles of the non-Islamic opposition in the Middle East
and in the West in the past decades, all that has been visible has been
occasional reports of the barbarity of political Islam and the
reactions of Western governments, media and 'intellectual' apologists
for Islam. But, there is a third force, a sleeping giant who can turn
the situation around. If this giant awakes, this era could see the
beginning of positive changes and the realisation of ideals that were
almost abandoned during the final decades of the 20th century. Humanity
must rise up and defend itself against the barbarity of Islam.

The
ranks of civilised humanity form a massive force that has, so far,
sadly been silenced. It can come to the fore. For the future of
humanity, it must come to the fore. If there is to be a future, it is
in the formation of an active, progressive and freedom-loving policy at
the forefront of the ranks of the people. Otherwise, the stage is left
open to terrorism and barbarism. I finish my speech with the hope that
in the coming years of the 21st century, we will witness the victory of
humanity, of humanism, over Islam. All freedom-lovers and secularist
forces around the world should come together in a joint effort to
combat political Islam; to promote secularism, egalitarianism and
freedom, in the societies that Islam oppresses.

Adapted from the speech delivered at the session on Humanism and Islam at the IHEU World Congress 2002.